


Hero Management

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: School Shootings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m jumping at every car backfire; every sound has me on edge. And when I sit in class my mind isn’t there, I’m just thinking of where I’ll hide when the gunman comes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero Management

“You’re both lucky to be alive.” The therapist tells me.

And to be honest, every time I hear somebody say that it makes me want to open fire.

Revenge, you know? Even if this guy wasn’t there.

I’m jumping at every car backfire; every sound has me on edge. And when I sit in class my mind isn’t there, I’m just thinking of where I’ll hide when the gunman comes.

***

I hate math. So does Rob. So we both sit at the back of the class, huddled behind our desks and staring around the room. Rob has his text book propped up on his desk with a Superman comic open inside of it. He looks up every now and then to listen to the teacher then goes right back to doing nothing.

Pythagoras’s theorem. I’ve never been more bored in my entire life.

My teacher is saying “The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.”

Rob is saying, “Dude. Superman just died!”

I roll my eyes at him, “Well the title of the comic is ‘the death of Superman.’”

“Yeah well,” he turns the page and glares coldly at it, “I had thought it was just a quirky title.”

What I’m thinking, just before the door opens, is whether or not to eat in the school cafeteria again. I know Rob will, but I hate the food. And I’m thinking…can I make it until four without anything to eat. I look at the clock and it’s eleven thirty eight.

I’m still looking at the clock when the guy steps in. One gun shot and everybody notices him. There’s blood. And screaming. And the sound of his gun pumping bullets into my classmates one after the other.

I hit the deck. Duck and cover, like they taught us for the earthquakes. My hands covering my head, everything sounds like it’s underwater. The screams are far away, muted and hollow. And blood lands on my skin, lands all around me.

Then the gunfire stops and there’s silence. Then the screaming starts again. I push myself shakily to my feet and stare around in horror. Our teacher, she’s dead, her head blown open against the wall, as are the kids in the front row. Most of them are slumped over their desk, some are on the floor from where they tried to escape.

I can’t breathe. I’m not the only person left alive, but I feel like I am. I feel alone. And so so small.

Then I remember. And I turn to Rob. His comic book is covered in blood and his body is slumped on the floor. I can’t see or do anything for the blood. I pull out my cellphone and dial 911.

And down the line all I can do is scream.

***

I sit in the hospital room, my legs hanging over the edge of the bed as I stare blankly at the stone floor. I’ve barely spoken and I know they’re all worried. All I care about is Rob. They won’t tell me how he’s doing. Probably it’s that everything is so uncertain.

My bag is at my feet and I stare at that, instead. There’s blood on it. Blood on my hands. Blood drying in my hair. None of it is mine, but I don’t feel like I won anything here.

I’m about to pull out my mp3 player to drown out the cries of parents in the hallway when a doctor walks in and closes the door behind him.

“How are you feeling, Mike?”

I want to be stoic and defiant, I want to refuse to speak to them, any of them, because they couldn’t save the kids in my class. They couldn’t do anything. But eventually I take a deep breath. “I need to see Rob.”

That voice isn’t mine. That tiny, shaky little voice. That isn’t who I am.

“Rob is in the ICU, Mike, you’ll be able to visit him in a couple of hours.”

I answer his questions numbly, my stomach still churning.

I want to get out of here. I kick my feet and think of Dorothy. Wizard of Oz, you know? There’s no place like home?

Surely I can wish this all away.

This can’t be real.

They make me stay in the hospital all day, just in case. Apparently I’m in shock. I suppose they can tell that by my not being able to stop crying or shaking or throwing up. My parents come and sit at my bedside and none of us speak. There’s nothing to say. So we sit in silence.

It’s late, maybe almost midnight, before they say I can see Rob.

Being in the ICU is like being in a spaceship, and I know Rob will laugh when he wakes up. He looks tiny in the bed, wires connected everything and monitoring him. A ventilator, an intravenous drip.

I sit by his bed nervously and take his hand carefully, not touching the pulse clip on his index finger. There’s gauze wrapped tight around his head with blood spotting it. Over the buzz of the machines I can hear my parents talking to Rob’s parents.

And I hear them say it took them hours to remove the bullet.

And even though they were as careful as they could be it made no difference.

I hear the words ‘brain damage’ and grip Rob’s hand tighter.

I hear the words ‘may never regain consciousness’.

And I start to cry again.

***

Where I am now is staring the therapist down angrily. “Nobody in that school is lucky to be alive. Rob isn’t alive – he’s one step from dead. When he woke up his brain didn’t and the doctors said that he may remain in a persistent vegetative state. And I’m not stupid, I know that means he’s a vegetable. Go and tell him he’s lucky to be alive. He doesn’t even fucking know he’s awake.”

I don’t tell the therapist how I read to him. The Superman comics he loves so much. And he was looking at me but he didn’t even know who I was. So I told him about when we were kids and we jumped off his garage roof with red capes tied around our neck, I told him about how he broke his leg and we’d have sword fights with his crutches.

I tell the therapist. “Me and Rob were both gonna go to UCLA. We were going to be room mates. We were going to be somebody. And now because of some…some fucking asshole who can’t fucking afford Prozac. Because of somebody else’s problems he won’t be.”

I’m crying again.

I know Rob would laugh at me.

If he could speak.

If he knew who I was.

Still crying I say, “Every time I go to school I almost breakdown. All of us do. Nobody will ever be the same again.”

But this guy is just steepling his fingers and nodding slowly, politely.

I just stare him down.

Then walk out.

I walk ten blocks to the comic book store and sit and read every Superman comic they have. This should make me feel better but it doesn’t.

Because there’s no Superman. Like there’s no God.

Like there’s no karma.

Like there’s no hope.


End file.
